What is a Transgender person

[JoAnnDallas]

I found this explination on Trans Gender yahoo Group.

You are considered transgender if:
o You want to live as a member of your preferred gender
o You are in the process of changing over to your preferred gender
o You live as a member of your preferred gender
o You have lived as a member of your preferred gender in the past or
o You are intersexual and live as a member of your preferred gender
o You do not need to be taking hormones, nor be planning or have had
sex reassignment surgery.

[DonnaT]

Sounds like some one is trying to bogart the term transgender, and is afraid to use the term transsexual.

[Elizabeth]

Hey girls,

Yes, I agree with Donna on this one. I believe the generally accepted use of the term "transgender" is anyone that has a gender issue, including but not limited to Crossdressers, drag queen/king, transgenderists, pre-op/post-op/non-op transsexuals, gender benders and gender queer.

Love always,
Elizabeth

[Lydia]

I like the term: Gender-confused.

Hugs,

Lydia

[Connie]

Is JoannDallas' list one where you need to meet all condintions or just one?

If just one then the first,

You want to live as a member of your preferred gender

would include everybody.

Connie

[DonnaT]

LOL, so true Connie.

[Anne-Marie]

Strictly speaking a transgender person is one who has made the transition after an operation to a gender different from that in which (s)he was originally classified. Another term would be 'transsexual' as has already been pointed out. I crossdress because I like the feel and senuousness of feminine clothing and attire as a whole, have no desire to change my gender and am quite happy being a 100% heterosexual male in my normal life. I refuse to be called transgender.

[Anne-Marie]

I like the term: Gender-confused.

Hugs,

Lydia

Gender-confused is one who is uncertain about his/her gender but is not the same as 'transgendered', that is, transsexual. As a crossdresser (not 24/7) I am not at all gender-confused. I know I am a heterosexual male and am happy with that.

[DonnaT]

Strictly speaking a transgender person is one who has made the transition after an operation to a gender different from that in which (s)he was originally classified. Another term would be 'transsexual' as has already been pointed out. I crossdress because I like the feel and senuousness of feminine clothing and attire as a whole, have no desire to change my gender and am quite happy being a 100% heterosexual male in my normal life. I refuse to be called transgender.

You have every right to refuse to be labeled as transgender, but the term is actually an umbrella term covering crossdressers and transsexuals.

Many of us who don't mind the term, and consider ourselves to be "100% heterosexual male" crossdressers, also consider ourselves to be transgender.

And one thing we won't do is let the term only mean transsexual.

Nor will pre-op and non-op transsexuals be denied a spot under the umbrella.

Note that many transsexuals who have had the operation prefer to be labeled according to their transitioned appearance, i.e., man or woman.

[CherylM]

I am uncomfortable, being labelled as a "transgender". I am 100% MALE, and I am 100% Heterosexual. You could even call me a "flaming heterosexual". I am 54 years old, and I have the sexual drive of an 18 year old stud. I thought that as men aged, their sexual drive would cool, and not be as pronounced as a younger man. I was wrong.

I have nothing at all against people who are transsexual, or have gender dysphoria (sp?). If a person is "born in to the wrong body", then they are fortunate to have the medical procedures and reconstructive surgeries that are available.

Even though I find delight in my femme side, I cannot and will not be classified with a group with which I find no commonality. Fact is, I like Cheryl. Cheryl is more than a femme name, she is a friend of mine.

[Jillian]

You have every right to refuse to be labeled as transgender, but the term is actually an umbrella term covering crossdressers and transsexuals.

Many of us who don't mind the term, and consider ourselves to be "100% heterosexual male" crossdressers, also consider ourselves to be transgender.

This.

It's all semantics anyway and can be argued or discussed till the end of time but I think the confusion around the term "transgender" stems from a fundamental misunderstanding over the difference between sex and gender (and how both related to orientation). Male or Female according to genitalia is sex and that can't be changed except via various surgeries. Gender, on the other hand, is socially constructed and is as much attained as it is assigned. Gender roles dictate how people born into the male or female sex are "supposed" to act or present themselves. When a girl plays sports as a child instead of playing with dolls, she's defying an early social gender role.

To me, a transgender person is someone who identifies with the opposite gender they were born into and it goes beyond crossdressing. Transgender folks have a pull to do more than just occasionally don a dress and wear panties. They seek acceptance as their target gender.

Me personally, I've presented for 25 years as a 100% heterosexual male with the occasional androgynous bend (you should have seen the haircut I had in high school!) but I also know that I'm transgendered and have a desire to look and feel more feminine. My attraction to women has not changed, so does that make me a Transgendered Lesbian? Possibly, depending on how one defines those terms.

Ultimately the definitions can be, and will be, entirely personal, but it's also important to distinguish the basic difference between sex, gender, and orientation and how they all relate (or don't, as the case may be) to one another.

[Carolynn]

The term transgender was made up by Virginia Prince who was trying to give people in her early version of the Society for the Second Self (TriS) a better word for themselves than transvestite. The term was then co-opted by a few TS since they felt using the term trans gender better described their journey. Then the GLB in their ignorance chose the term as an umbrella term for political action, with help from many people with different motivations but most of them oriented toward politcal rights action. And they extend it as the umbrella, covering CDs, TVs, TS, GQ, and DQ. Nice alphabet soup, eh?

Currently, it sorta matters in what context you may be using the term. I am considered to be TS by my therapist, though I am intersexed, because I lived most of my life trying to cope with a male social role after imposed "corrective" surgery while a child. Because of the confusion surrounding the term transgender, I would prefer to be described by TS or IS rather than transgendered if a questioner could not accept that I have already been female all my life. For me it is a matter of medical history, and in about 6 months the need for the designation is going to be old history to the extent I am allowed by society to put it aside.

For what it's worth:
One of the main differences, as voiced by one of my post-op friends (Georgiegirl), is that we can get over being trans-sexual through surgery and assimilation (not entirely true as you will always have a medical history, but she is young). But if you are transgendered as in a CD, you will always be CD/transgendered unless you have surgery. Well, for her things are kinda black and white, and she is just beginning to face the near impossibility of getting any kind of a good paying job as a woman with a TS medical history.

Another (listed as BitterBeth) has expressed her own opinion that TS are people who have such a strong need to be who they really are they go through enormous expenditures in surgery and non surgical cosmetic procedures ($85-100K), lose jobs, often friends and family, all to become a minority part of the @ 50% of the human race who gets ignored and paid about 68-72% of the rate they would have received for the same work as a male, and then placed under a glass ceiling there is really little hope of bursting through, become more likely to be subjected to rape and murder than a "normal" woman, and are snickered at, threatened, and put down by all other portions of society if any word of their medical history becomes known. Then there are some numbnuts that view that medical history as a choice? Yeah, right.

In Beth's view the term Transgendered is applicable to the males who share a bit in feminine feelings, but feel themselves to be heterosexual, and satisfied with and enjoy their sexual appurtenances and a male social role, and enjoy a little of the feminine as a hobby while participating in the oppression of real women at work and other facets of their lives.

She is 5 years post op, rather passible, and is making slightly more than 50% of her former salary even though her capabilities have not been degraded by the surgery, just the perceptions of her abilities in the male world. So she is bitter and angry, but says in the final analysis it was worth it to be who she really is.

As I said, for what it is worth.

[Absaroka]

The stuff about folks enduring the difficulties of becoming a woman like lower pay and so on ignores the FTM transgender folks completely.

I don't consider myself transgender and I don't consider wearing a dress to be getting in touch with my feminine side. It's more like being my own imaginary friend. I suppose there are things I do that could be thought of as getting in touch with what society calls a feminine side, such as nurturing my daughters or when I get upset being the drama queen of the family. But wearing a dress is something else.

Absaroka

[Carolynn]

Absorka,
In the first place, it was a M2F woman who was postop for 5 years writing, not a F2M. If you want some numbers, see below.

If Women Were More Like Men: Why females earn less. Time Magazine article by John Cloud

Kristen Schilt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and Matthew Wiswall, an economist at New York University, couldn't quite pull off that study. But they have come up with the first systematic analysis of the experiences of transgender people in the labor force. And what they found suggests that raw discrimination remains potent in U.S. companies.

Schilt and Wiswall found that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more. The study was just published in the Berkeley Electronic Press' peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.

The men and women in the study had already gone to school and made their career choices. Some of them changed jobs after they transitioned, and some stayed in the same jobs. Some were out to their employers; others started completely new lives as members of the opposite sex. Regardless, the overall pattern was very clear: newly minted women were punished, and newly minted men got a little bump-up in pay.

[Absaroka]

You may have misunderstood. There's no arguement from me about m2f getting lower pay and f2m getting raises. I was objecting to the tenor of the writing which seemed to suggest that the only transgender category is m2f. Check out the wording of Bitterbeth's comments on "TS people"

Conventional wisdom is the m2f surgery outnumbers f2m surgery about 3 to 1. However there have been changes in the last few years (I forget where I read this) and it is beginning to seem that the ratio is moving towards 1:1, however the f2m folks seem to attract a lot less attention for a variety of reasons.

Absaroka